Read and Reflect ||September 2020

Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat

The importance of reading for military officers cannot be overemphasised. During my tenure as the CNS, I had started the practice of every officer reviewing a book which was to be attached to his Annual Confidential Report (ACR). The idea was to ensure that not only each officer read, but also reflected upon what he read. In no specific order, here is my recommendation for must read books for all officers.

• The Officer as a Leader is a remarkable book on military leadership by Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall (1900-1977), American author and military analyst. The author discusses the psychology of a leader and what it takes to be one. He points out the 13 mistakes that every leader should avoid that are now well known in armies across the world as the Ten Commandments.
• On the Psychology of Military Incompetence is a classic study of military leadership and an original exploration of the battles that have defined the last two centuries of human civilization. It is an essential guide for the next generation of military leaders. The author, psychologist Norman F. Dixon, argues that there is a pattern to inept ‘generalship’, and locates this pattern within the very act of creating armies in the first place, which in his vie